Sunday, September 22, 2013

Kenya's Moment of Tragedy and Decision

By
now most people will have seen the tragic news flowing out of Nairobi.One of Kenya’s capital’s large malls was
attacked and taken over by a group of gunmen.Yesterday’s news was full of images of Kenyans and expatriates fleeing
the mall, many of them injured, all of them terrified.The latest reports indicate that at least 59
people have been killed.The gunmen are
holding a position in the mall, together with civilians who seem to be
hostages.Earlier this morning,
following a press update and address by the President and other national
leaders, commandos were said to be storming the mall.

The
country has experienced other attacks in recent years, mostly consisting of
grenades lobbed into matatu stages,
nightclubs, churches, or shop fronts, but the attack on the Westgate Mall, in an
affluent neighbourhood, which has killed not only Kenyans (including the
President’s nephew and his fiancée), but also many foreigners (including
diplomats and members of the continent’s literary elite), is being interpreted
as marking something new for a grief-stricken nation to grapple with.For the time being, Nairobians and Kenyans
are helping the injured and flocking to blood donor stations, but how the city
and nation interpret and act on the merciless attack will be important in the
days and weeks to come.

The
attack is widely assumed to be the work of Al Shabab, an Al Qaeda affiliate
based in Somalia (and indeed, Al Shabab has taken “credit” for the attack).Kenya’s northern neighbour has posed
security, administrative, and social dilemmas for the country since it gained
its independence from Britain in 1963.The
vast Northern Frontier District constituted an enormous and sparsely-populated
swathe of northern and eastern Kenya, including the border regions with
Somalia.The irredentist Somali government
made claims to the region and its Somali inhabitants, who largely favoured
incorporation into a greater Somali state (Somalia fought a war against
Ethiopia over a similar claim in the Ogaden).

The
Kenyan government, fearful that ceding territory to Somalia would encourage regional
strife in a nation which emerged from an anti-colonial war badly-strained and
little resembling a unified nation, refused to contemplate such a measure.The result was a four-year insurgency in
which the Kenyan government, aided by the British, put down Somali insurgents
(labelled shifta) and drove the Somali
government’s forces from the country.This was not pleasantly done.Game Scouts and police of Somali heritage serving the Kenyan state were
stripped of their weapons and either sacked or sent to other parts of the
colony, a vote of no-confidence in the ethnic group by the state which claimed
to represent it.*The Kenyan security
forces also used the methods of the colonial government, and interned Somalis
in model villages, simultaneously launching the same kind of “rehabilitation”
programmes that had been directed at anti-colonial fighters during the Mau Mau
liberation struggle of the 1950s.

The
successors of the Northern Frontier District—until recently largely represented
by the North Eastern province, and today constituting Mandera, Wajir and
Garissa Provinces—represented a porous security and administrative risk to the
Kenyan state as Somalia disintegrated in the 1990s.The Kenyan government has long been rumoured
to favour the creation of a buffer zone along the border, and in late 2011,
following heightened activity by Al Shabab in the border regions, and massing
of refugees on the border, the Kenyan military launched a full-blown invasion
of southern Somalia, a move made in support of African Union operations and
those of the internationally-recognised but territorially-marginalised Somali
government.

The
invasion was largely greeted enthusiastically by the Kenyan public and
commentariat, which had long bemoaned the government’s failure to bring the
troubled region under control, and worried about who was entering Kenya
unaccounted for.In the early days,
blow-by-blow reports of the Kenyan forces’ advance appeared in the papers, and
the war was waged with as much vigour on twitter (with the Kenyan military
spokesman squaring off against his Al Shabab counterpart) as on the ground,
where allegations of atrocities by both sides quickly emerged.Soon after, the bombings began in Kenya, some
in the border regions, but others in Mombasa and Nairobi.It is now a matter of routine to have your
bags and person screened when entering even comparatively small establishments
of any kind in Nairobi, and security guards abound, giving the otherwise very
friendly and cosmopolitan-feeling city a slightly surreal feel.

The
war in Somalia and the bombings in Kenya have sparked a backlash against
Somalis in Kenya, some of whom are refugees, while others have lived in the
country for generations.As they were in
the 1960s during what was known as the “Shifta War”, Somalis
have been harassed in a fairly indiscriminate fashion, and many otherwise
open-minded Kenyans are much less tolerant when it comes to the “Somali problem”.It is widely assumed that organised crime and
financial networks operate in the capital, perhaps aiding Al Shabab or
loosely-affiliated malcontents.

This
afternoon in Nairobi President Uhuru Kenyatta and former-Prime Minister Raila
Odinga—bitter opponents during the election earlier this year (and sons of the
country’s two towering figures after independence)—made a show of unity with
cabinet members and representatives of Kenya’s ethnic and religious communities.Both spoke of the importance of diversity to
Kenya’s national story, the need for a unified national response, and decried
the Al Shabab criminals’ efforts to divide Kenyans against one another (gunmen
reportedly ordered Muslims to leave Westgate, while shooting down those who
couldn’t prove their religious bonafides in cold blood).They sounded calm and measured, and if their
message prevails, it sounds as though the government will be considered in its
response.

But
there were more calculating elements to the arguments of Kenya’s leaders.They sought to portray terrorism as a universal,
global phenomenon, almost a condition facing the world’s nations.They urged other nations not to issue travel
bans or warnings which they said would harm the country’s tourism sector and
economy.And they pleaded for help from
the world in fighting terrorism (indeed, it has been rumoured that the
large-scale assault underway at Westgate now is being aided by British and
Israeli advisors or operatives).

But
the people and nations of the world should be wary of stepping forward to turn
their nations into battlegrounds in some ethereal War on Terror, which as the U.S.
experience shows, inevitably morphs into a War of Terror.To be sure, organisations like Al Qaeda have
managed to create a global climate of fear, and provide moral and material
support to other groups, but affiliates like Al Shabab have much more parochial
ambitions, something which is ultimately true of virtually all “terrorist”
groups.In treating local criminal
groups as part of a global terrorist network, governments risk creating
connections where none previously existed.They risk engineering a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I
certainly hope that other nations help Kenya and the victims of the terrible
attack in Nairobi, the full damage of which will not be known for some
time.But in the rush to respond to
violence which feels inexplicable to Nairobi’s citizenry, we should also resist
the temptation to ignore such criminality’s local origins, and to differentiate
the perpetrators of such violence from the communities they claim to represent
(something the gunmen in Nairobi conspicuously failed to do in carrying out what they called “revenge”
for the actions of Kenya’s military in Somalia).

Kenya
should be wary of using its need for sympathy and support at a moment of
national grieving to further embroil itself in a global war of terror which has
brought little in the way of security or comfort to the nations waging it.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.